Article-"Representing Christ in a Postmodern World"

Speaks about how our postmodern society wants everyone to be tolerant of each other's beliefs. And by being tolerant, we are to let people say & believe that allah is God? That there are a number of ways to get into Heaven? That by being a good person you can get into Heaven? No way! The postmodern society isn't about tolerance, but wants us to compromise our beliefs!

At the heart of postmodernism is relativism, the belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder. So all truth depends on the situation, culture or language of the person. Two conflicting statements can, therefore, be true: abortion is wrong vs. abortion is ok if.....

Christians tend to fight/argue relativism with absolute objectivism, the belief that all truths are objective. This is the opposite of relativism; all truth is not dependent on the situation, culture or language of the person.

The problem is that there are certain beliefs that can be relative (e.g., eating ham is ok for me, but a sin for the person who believes it is not ok to eat it but does anyway; listening to a certain music may be ok for some but wrong for others). So there are instances when the non-trivial truths can sometimes be relative. We just need to discern between what are the absolute objective truths and what are not. What truths exactly according to the Bible are essential to salvation; what exactly is the content that we must believe in order to be saved; is it enough to just believe or do we need to believe AND turn from sin; do we need to believe in the virgin birth to be saved; is it essential that each believer be baptized...

We need to filter the issues into relative (in the eye of the beholder/depends on situation) vs. objective (definite right or wrong). A chart is included (pg 153 out of the 157 pgs in Adobe) with

True Relativity
Situational (dependent on time, culture, situation)
Autonomous (truly relative. There is no right or wrong. Based on opinion)

vs. True Objectivity (there is a definite right or wrong & not dependent on time, culture or circumstances).
Essential: necessary for salvation. Truths that a person must accept in order to be a true Christian.
Non-essential: not necessary for salvation (e.g., the cessation of tongues either ceased or did not cease to exist today. The truth of tongues is objective, but it is not a prerequisite for salvation.

CREATE YOUR OWN CHART W/RELATIVISM ON THE LEFT & OBJECTIVISM ON THE RIGHT. AS EVERY DAY ISSUES ARISE, PRACTICE CATEGORIZING THEM.

Problem with the Church is that we tend to major in the minors; that is we "witness" to people about the non-essential objective truths that are not important to salvation (rock & roll is OK, having a glass of wine is OK - these tend to be more relative anyway). And if we emphasize the non-essentials too much, they end up becoming on-par with the essentials and it's then hard to really differentiate between the two (this is called "overstatement"). The non-essentials become more important and the essentials become less important.

So some truth is relative, but there are also objective truths - especially the path to salvation, which must not be watered down by non-essential truths.